Flavor - Sestina Exercise

Flavor

Spoonful on my shirt, surprised enough you ask, “Mel, a shower,
Now?” I didn’t have the heart to mention the soup,
It’s heat, it’s veggies, or spices that shocked my tongue.
I bit down hard, not realizing cut to walls of mouth, as if I forgot
Which sensation belonged to a surface, as if I fell into a crack.
Was it my lip, my tongue, or the inside of my cheek

I bit? Tremor gave rise to my chest, twice, a tear down my cheek.
I practiced discretion, bowl set down softly, a hot shower
On the edge of scald. I forgot I left a crack
In the door, missing the spices, tomato-strewn noodles, soup
Not getting a chance to roll down my throat, like I forgot
How to swallow, how to miss my teeth with spoon, tongue

In the way, a bite meant for flavor, cut my tongue.
I let steam and sweat of shower and fear hit my cheek.
I tried to blink fast, a trick I learned to dry tears, then I forgot
Why I got scared, hadn’t even stepped out of the shower,
When I felt my face droop on the right, mouth like soup
That sat so long it chilled. I could’ve sworn a crack

Lined my face, eye to chin. I had to be calm, not crack
Up when I went to tell Elle I can’t move my tongue;
Confessing it wasn’t lack of appetite, but sip – soup
Incapable of falling from spoon to mouth, my cheek
Red from embarrassment, from concern, and shower;
Elle saying, “You enjoyed your shower so much, you forgot

You left your soup.” Then, she stopped, forgot
How she was teasing me. I saw a shudder, a voice crack.
I picked up the phone. Dialed my doc; remembered the shower.
It didn’t bother me I was out of order, as long as tongue
Worked long enough to tell doc, “Can’t blink. Can’t feel my cheek
On my right side.” Hanging up, I longed for the soup

I made, in that slap-dash-pinch of a way my soup
Is never the same. I’m calm enough to forget I ever forgot
Anything, fifty years of things, so absent-minded, I’m chic;
Giving me a rep for speaking dyslexic, codes to crack,
Twenty years of listeners reaching language on my tongue,
An audience, a nod of recognition, a shower

To me, when at last my cheek is subtle, and I enjoy hot soup,
With spices, broth as shower – no, a stream clearing why I forgot;
Not mad, or a crack-up, but flavoring my tongue.

2006 Copyright Melody Berning. Vermont College